Digital health services with a future in Africa

Klinik is actively seeking opportunities to be involved in developing digital healthcare solutions worldwide. At the beginning of March, Klinik entered into direct dialogue with influential players in the industry at the fifth Africa Healthcare event, which was held in London. Although African countries are on very different levels in their development, they are quite similar in some respects, compared to Western countries, says the CEO of Klinik Healthcare Solutions, Hannu Nissinen.

“First, the amount of money used on healthcare per capita is approximately five per cent of that of Western countries. On the other hand, there is a severe shortage of healthcare professionals. Therefore, there is a need to address the situation using lighter, digital solutions”, says Nissinen.

The advantage is that they have no old, large health data systems that need expensive integration, but they have skipped over one or more stages of development and jumped straight into the digital world.

All this means that the introduction of a Western healthcare model is not feasible in many African countries. As an example, Nissinen mentions Nigeria, a country with a population of 190 million, where there is a shortage of healthcare workforce.

“Nigeria has, for example, in banking moved directly into the world of mobile services. The advantage is that they have no old, large health data systems that need expensive integration, but they have skipped over one or more stages of development and jumped straight into the digital world.”

Klinik sees that it will have an important role as an enabler of future digital healthcare services in Africa.

“It is obvious that not all African countries are yet ready to jump straight into digitalisation. If a hospital does not even have running water, digitalisation is still a distant dream. However, in some countries, digitalisation is already a reality, and there is a readiness to use our services.”

Africa Healthcare is Africa’s largest healthcare event in Europe. It brings together industry representatives and investors, and more than 750 decision-makers from African countries and key players in healthcare. The event features more than one hundred top speakers from the health ministries, hospitals and other healthcare organisations of different African countries, and a display of products and services by 75 exhibitors.